LIDO FACTS

❚ The Lido is named af­ter Ital­ian re­sort Lido di Venezia which set it­self up for beach bathing in 1857. The name Lido has been ap­plied to out­door pools ever since. ❚ Palmer­ston North’s Lido in­cor­po­rated an ar­ti­fi­cial beach on its 50-me­tre leisure pool and set the stan­dard for pub­lic swim­ming pools around NewZealand. ❚ The 25-me­tre John Boldt in­door pool made year-round swim­ming pos­si­ble in 1983. ❚ Ama­jor re­de­vel­op­ment in 2002 rad­i­cally changed the leisure pool fa­cil­i­ties, roof­ing over a spe­cialised learn-to-swim pool, spa pool and a ‘lazy river’, while adding two in­door hy­droslides, ❚ The Su­per­bowl and Speed slide, the first of their type in the coun­try, and a zero-depth aqua-play area, were added in 2014. ❚ The nine bod­ies ofwa­ter in the 22 mil­lion litre com­plex are kept at around 25 de­grees while pumps cir­cu­late 383,000 litres through the leisure pools ev­ery hour.